Converting OPML to headers/list

Ken Tryon's Avatar

Ken Tryon

26 Oct, 2023 10:10 PM

I've been looking for a way to convert OPML to Word headings (styles) rather than an unordered list. I'm able to read an OPML file in Marked and export it to RTF or DOCX that is styled as headings but lacks Word styles. I can also export to Markdown which is all headers and no list, which I then have to import into Ulysses or other Markdown editor that can export as RTF or DOCX.

I'm looking for something that is similar to MindNode's ability to export the first three outline levels to headings and the rest to lists, and to export to Word or RTF. It would be even better if I could set how many header levels and how many list levels to export.

Is this something I can configure in Marked? I'm guessing I'd need to build a custom stylesheet, which I'm happy to do with documentation.

Thanks,

kt

  1. Support Staff 1 Posted by Brett on 26 Oct, 2023 10:27 PM

    Brett's Avatar

    Marked's DOCX capabilities are admittedly very limited. As you note, it
    doesn't create Word styles for elements, but rather manually styles each
    one.

    I know iThoughts is (at least used to be) able to determine what node
    level should break from headers to lists, but Marked doesn't have this
    option. Where are you getting the OPML from? Is MindNode's export not
    sufficient? Just curious.

    -Brett

    On 26 Oct 2023, at 17:12, Ken Tryon wrote:

  2. 2 Posted by Ken Tryon on 27 Oct, 2023 01:05 AM

    Ken Tryon's Avatar

    SimpleMind is my primary mind mapping app, and I export OPML from that. I can either send the OMPL direct to Marked or import it into MindNode. MindNode exports to Markdown, and Ulysses reads Markdown and exports to RTF or DOCX. It works (eventually), but that's a lot of steps.

    It's not critical—I'm just looking for a more efficient and configurable process. Marked comes closer than anything else to doing this in one step. I've also tried exporting from Marked to Markdown, then processing that in TextSoap or another text processor to convert markdown headings to dashed lists as desired. That still leaves the Markdown to DOCX step.

    I'm wondering if Pandoc might work--I just need to dig into the documentation.

  3. 3 Posted by Ken Tryon on 27 Oct, 2023 01:39 AM

    Ken Tryon's Avatar

    Yep, you're right. I downloaded the trial version of iThoughts, and it does exactly what I want in one step. A bit pricey, but it also has a bunch of tools I haven't seen in other apps (like Markdown formatting), and it's the exact tool I've been looking for. I may be able to create maps in iThoughts and export to a finished document with little to no post processing cleanup.

    Thanks for the tip!

  4. 4 Posted by Ken Tryon on 27 Oct, 2023 02:13 AM

    Ken Tryon's Avatar

    Checked out iThoughts' Markdown export, and it's wonderfully tweakable as well. Once my text is in Markdown, I can edit in any of the several Markdown apps I've found--Ulysses and Typora are my current favorites. I found Marked because I was using Ulysses via Setapp, which, while it wasn't my first encounter with Markdown, it was the first time I used it heavily. It also is waaaaay cleaner than Scrivner.

    I've been a fan of styles and tagging ever since I learned to do page layout in Quark Express, which had powerful styling capabilities. It even could read tagged text in a sort of proto-XML format, way back in the early 90s. Word styles are reasonably usable, but hardly anyone knows about them, and most people bung them up with local formatting. I proofread and preflight a monthly newsletter in Word at work, and what I get is a formatting abomination. Someday I'll teach our committee how to use styles. If I'm really lucky, I'll get them to compose in Markdown. A guy can dream.

    kt

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